Gordon Brown’s premiership may end in tears: most do. That does not mean that the end will be soon; it will almost certainly not be.

Mr Brown’s many enemies, and they are pretty vehement to judge by the blogs, are letting their wishes run ahead of precedent and experience.

Mr Brown is going through a very rough patch at present. As he remarked a couple of months ago, the swings of media fashion mean that troubles tend to accumulate so the impression is given that nothing is going right. Even successes, such as large parts of his trip to America last week (the UN Security Council session and holding meetings with all three presidential candidates), get overshadowed by problems back home.

There is nothing new or exceptional, however, in periods like the present when all the headlines are gloomy. Margaret Thatcher had a dire few months at the beginning of 1986, starting with the Westland crisis, then the rows over the future of Land Rover and the American use of British bases to bomb Libya, and the Government losing the second reading of an important Bill (on liberalising shop-opening hours). Ministers began to speculate on the succession. At one stage, before the key Commons debate on Westland, she said that she might not be Prime Minister by the evening but she survived for another four and a half years.

As the Crossman, Castle, Benn and later Donoughue diaries vividly record, the life of the Wilson governments often seemed to be one miserable week of bad headlines, cabinet rows, rumours and plots after another. As Sir Gerald Kaufman, his doughty adviser in the 1960s, would quickly and rightly point out, however, Wilson won four general elections and achieved a lot.

More recently, the Major Government often had spells as bad as, if not worse than, Mr Brown’s current one, as ministers and MPs fought each other and the Tories disintegrated as a party of government. Remember the whipless ones, the agonies over the Maastricht treaty, the defeat over extending VAT, cash-for-questions scandals and resignations and by-election losses.

Tony Blair also had his “worst week ever” about every six months after 2003, and even once or twice before then, as he used to remark when gloom descended yet again. As we now know, like his two predecessors, he contemplated resignation.

Troubles passed, often leaving lasting damage, but not toppling the edifice. Of the 11 prime ministers since 1945 before Mr Brown, five left Downing Street after a general election defeat. Churchill quit because of age; Eden after the Suez debacle and because of ill health; Macmillan because of illness; and Wilson because of failing powers. Thatcher was ousted after an internal revolt (almost impossible to engineer under Labour rules); Blair’s voluntary departure was accelerated by the failed coup of September 2006.

Mr Brown’s conditional leasehold is not under serious threat. The real danger is more insidious as each setback undermines his political authority, distracting attention and sapping energy within 10 Downing Street.

Brown shares could easily recover next month, but any such recovery will be guarded and hedged, with the suspicion that it may not last for long. The Brown premiership is likely to be a long drawn-out struggle.

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